Analyst consensus for storage growth in '05

IDC, Meta Group, and Nemeretes Research have a similar story to tell about how much the storage market is going to grow this year. The figure seems to hover at 45%-50%. IT Analysis highlights results from a small survey performed by Nemertes Research at the Network World 2005 IT Roadmap Tech Tour conference, which shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents stated that they expect storage to grow at between 10 and 50 percent over the next twelve months. Meta Group breaks the market into three, saying that net annual storage growth will average 20%-25% for enterprise (monolithic), 50%-55% for midrange (modular), and 80%-85% for low-cost, capacity-based (SATA/ATA) storage, yielding aggregate storage growth of 45% per year. And according to a recent IDC Insight, 2005 looks to be another year of relative stability, with storage systems revenue growing over 2% and total shipped capacity to rise by nearly 45%. Among the trends mentioned in the report, networked storage is expanding unabated into large businesses and starting to make inroads into medium-sized businesses, driving demand for SAN ports.